Right Hand of the Devil
by Lyrical Ballads
Summary: A series of glimpses into Beni's life, from Hungary to the Legion to his end at Hamunaptra.
1. Sightless

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _The Mummy_.

**Author's Note: **So, how do I explain this? Basically this is a oneshot collection meant to replace another oneshot collection I wrote called _Deadly_. I was reading through _Deadly_ a while ago and realized that I wasn't happy with it at all, so I deleted it and started on this little project instead. This oneshot collection will contain some all-new material, along with a couple of rewritten pieces from _Deadly._ I might even take down a couple of my old standalone oneshots, completely rewrite them, and add them in here. No point in keeping something if I'm not satisfied with it, after all. :)

* * *

**Right Hand of the Devil**

* * *

Sightless

She couldn't see him, but she knew he was thin. When he climbed onto the mattress, it didn't groan and dip down the way it did under heavier men, and she didn't feel like the breath was being crushed from her lungs when he settled on top of her. When she touched him she felt skinny arms, narrow shoulders, and a series of bony ridges that were probably his ribs. Yet she couldn't judge him, knowing she was no prize herself. She never saw her reflection, but she imagined she must be hollow-eyed and sharp-boned, no better than this underfed man who took her greedily, almost impatiently, as if he feared she would vanish before he could be satisfied.

She could tell he was poor, too. She felt rough material when she touched his clothes and found a hole in his breeches, the kind that started out small and grew larger as the weeks passed. She didn't know the color of his eyes or hair, but she didn't have to see him to know that he smoked cigarettes, that he hadn't shaved in a few days, that he didn't use soap when he bathed—if he bathed at all. He rolled off of her with a little sigh, making the mattress creak just slightly as he settled his pitiful weight beside her. She caught her breath, staring at the ceiling with sightless eyes.

"You're not as good as they say you are," he said. He had an unpleasant whine of a voice and she supposed he had an ugly face to match, since the ugly ones always loved coming to her door. Or at least that was what the other girls said.

"I didn't know I was supposed to be good," she told him.

"You're the only blind prostitute in Budapest, but you're just like every other whore I've had. I could have paid less for a better time."

"Then why didn't you?"

He let out a derisive little snort. "That is not important. I've had whores since I was fifteen and you're nothing special at all."

She wondered why he felt the need to tell her this. "Fifteen?" she said. "Why so young? Couldn't you find a nice neighborhood girl who would take a second look at you?"

"Nice girls are boring."

His voice sounded whinier than ever, as if all the nice girls in the world had personally wounded him. She figured he _must_ be ugly, because only an ugly man would say such a thing. Only an ugly man would seek out a prostitute who couldn't see him.

He sat up and fumbled around in his pockets, or at least she hoped they were his pockets, and relaxed when he found whatever he was seeking. Moments later she heard a match strike against something and caught an unmistakable scent of cigarette smoke. She had learned to tell the difference between cigarette and cigar smoke ages ago, thanks to all the customers who lit up when they were done with her, and when she held her breath she could hear her companion take a drag, then slowly let the smoke out.

"What do you do for a living?" she asked, bored after the first three drags.

"Why do you ask?" he said.

"I want to know how you can afford all those whores you were bragging about. What do you do?"

"I steal things."

She couldn't tell if he was joking or not. "Like what?"

"Anything. Sometimes I trick people out of their money, too."

"And how do you do that?"

He snickered into his cigarette. "It's not hard. There are a lot of idiots out there."

She wondered if he thought _she_ was an idiot, because she sold herself for a living and couldn't even see if her customers cheated her. She wondered if he paid her the wrong amount on purpose, taking advantage of her lack of sight. She rolled onto her side, facing his direction, and wished she could see his face, just to get a clue of what went on in his head.

"If you're a thief and a con artist, then why would you tell me that?" she asked. "Aren't you afraid you'll get arrested?"

"Why should I be afraid?" he scoffed. "It's not like you can describe my face to the police or anything."

"Does your family know you lie, steal, and spend your nights with whores?"

"I have no family," he said, the pathetic whine creeping back into his voice. "My mother died years ago and I don't know who my father is."

"Not even his name?"

He snickered again, but this time it sounded uglier than before. "No, he could have been anyone. My mother was a whore, like you, until her pimp threw her out of his house for getting knocked up. After that she worked in a factory, but she screwed the landlord when she couldn't pay the rent."

"How do you know that?"

"I was in the apartment when he came to screw her. We only had one room. He always threw his shoe at me when he wanted me to leave."

She knew she shouldn't feel sympathy for him, but she did. It was easy to feel pity for a man she couldn't see, even if he had that grating whine, and he didn't seem like the type who was too proud to turn pity away. A man like him probably ate up sympathy like it was candy. She reached out to touch him, then thought better of it, remembering his bony arms and cold, greedy hands, and murmured, "I'm sorry."

"So am I," he said sorrowfully.

She heard him put out his cigarette and felt his weight leave the bed as he swung his legs over the side and rose to his feet. She waited in silence, listening for his footsteps to tap across the floorboards, and was relieved when no suspicious noises reached her ears. The door slammed shut, signaling his departure, and she rolled onto her back, thinking of the poor ugly bastard who was making his way onto the dark streets of Budapest.

Next time he came to her, she would have to ask him his name.


	2. The Scam

**Author's Note: **This was originally part of _Deadly_. I've spent the last couple of months trying to rewrite this little story in a number of different ways, but all of my attempts failed, so in the end I decided to keep the original and revise it. I only made a few minor changes and I'm still not entirely happy with it, but I suppose this will have to do for now. I'd also like to note that these stories don't go in any chronological order. It's all kind of random.

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The Scam

The ratty curtains barely kept out Cairo's blazing sun and Beni turned away from the window, listening to the bed springs creak under his meager weight. A sliver of sunlight fell across the bed, highlighting his dark, unkempt hair and thin face that rested upon the pillow, and Beni groaned aloud when a sharp tapping noise reached his ears.

It sounded like knocking at the door, though it could have just been the pounding in his head. Maybe drinking half a bottle of whiskey last night was a bad idea, but Beni had learned to live every day to the fullest, just in case he got knifed in an alley or died or some terrible disease. Not very likely, considering his talent for squirming out of trouble, but a bottle of liquor didn't last long in his hands all the same.

"Gabor!"

The knocking persisted and Beni admitted that it must be reality, unless his hangover was so bad that it caused him to hear voices as well.

"Gabor, I know you're in there!"

Whoever stood outside spoke in Arabic, which was never a good sign. The Americans, English, and French usually pestered him about gambling debts and stolen property, but he could never predict what the Arabs wanted. He was scrounging his way in their city after all, and if the Arabs wanted to rid their city of one more rat then they wouldn't hesitate to do so. Beni continued to ignore the knocking and struggled to crack open his groggy eyes, trying to remembering if he had pissed off any Arabs lately.

"I swear to Allah if you do not open this door, I will have your pathetic head on a platter!"

Obviously he had pissed off _one_ Arab, though Beni couldn't remember why, and he forced himself to sit up so he could take a swig from the water jug that stood on the bedside table. His mouth felt like the Sahara. He dragged himself out of bed and staggered across the dusty floorboards, glad that he always slept fully dressed in case he needed to spring out of bed and run for his life. He had picked up that habit during his time in the Legion, when skirmishes could happen in the middle of the night, and he spat upon the floor when he remembered those hellish days with that miserable herd of soldiers. His floor was already filthy; a little spit wouldn't make any difference.

Cursing his headache, he tugged open the door and found an unfamiliar man standing before him, of average height with a blood-red turban and small, angry eyes. "What do you want?" Beni grumbled in Arabic.

"I want to know where my brother is," the man demanded.

"Who the hell are you?"

"My name is Abdul," said the man, glaring at Beni. "You took my brother Abu to Hamunaptra a month ago. He hasn't returned."

Beni laughed, though the sound got stuck in his throat and he ended up wheezing instead. "That is ridiculous," he said. "Hamunaptra does not exist."

"If it doesn't exist, then why did you say you would lead him there?"

Because the gullible bastard was paying him, but Beni didn't think Abdul would take kindly to that information. "I don't know what you are talking about," he said. "I have never been to Hamunaptra. I am only a poor man trying to survive in a country that it not my own."

"You're a poor _bastard _cheating innocent people. Where is my brother?"

"If he is at Hamunaptra like you say, then he is probably getting rich."

"I have heard rumors about you," said Abdul. He suddenly looked taller and a lot more threatening. "They say you take people to Hamunaptra and they never return."

"You should not believe every rumor you hear," said Beni, trying to make his exhausted eyes look sad. "I am so very, very sorry for your loss, but there is nothing that I can—_Ah!_"

A flash of steel shone in the morning sunlight as Abdul pulled out a knife, and the moment Beni saw that blade he shut his door with a frightened squeal, turning the lock as fast as he could. Abdul pounded on the door, shouting curses at him, but it soon became apparent that all of his threats would come to nothing. Beni relaxed against the door and allowed a smirk to cross his lips. That was the advantage of being confronted in his own home; he could always retreat and lock the door when things started to get ugly.

"You open up this door!" Abdul ordered. "I'm not finished with you!"

"Go to hell," Beni said with undisguised glee.

He trudged back to bed, hoping that Abdul wore himself out soon. He settled down onto the creaking mattress and turned his head from the window, so that his eyes faced the dark, stained wall, an ugly structure completely bare of decoration. Once or twice he thought about stealing a painting to hang in his dingy apartment, but he saw no point in stealing paintings when he changed apartments every few months. Somebody was always after him, always demanding money he didn't have or threatening to hurt him because of wrongdoings he didn't commit, and Beni was too nervous to stay in one place for long.

Thanks to that bastard Abdul, he would probably have to find a new place tomorrow, or else he would never get any peace. Beni grabbed his pillow and placed it over one ear, partially blocking out the sound of yells and curses from outside, and wished that Abdul had accompanied his brother Abu on that trip to the desert. Then Beni wouldn't have to deal with either of them.

Abu had been a real sucker, as the Americans would say. Once Beni had convinced him that he knew the way to Hamunaptra, Abu was willing to follow him anywhere, even if it involved walking off a cliff. After spending three long days on a boat with the man, Beni had no trouble camping out in the desert with Abu and then taking off in the middle of the night, off to find a boat back to Cairo. He had even been generous enough to take all of the food and water with him. Better to let Abu expire quickly rather than linger on for days on end, waiting for the desert to finish him off.

Beni removed the pillow from his ear and listened, half-expecting to hear more threats, curses, and knocks upon the door. All was silent. He smirked again and thought of the money stashed beneath his mattress, the easiest payoff he had ever earned in his miserable life.

Cairo was a breeding ground for suckers.


	3. Someday

**Author's Note:** I haven't been in the mood for updating any of my other stories, so I finally sat down and wrote another chapter of this one. This is loosely based on one of the chapters from _Deadly_, but I made a lot of major changes and I think I like this version a lot better. It fits more closely with the movie canon, for one thing, and I suppose you can't go wrong with that.

* * *

Someday

"Excuse me. Are you Rick O'Connell?"

Rick stared at the woman who stood in the doorway of his hotel room, wondering if she was yet another busybody come to gawk at the man who discovered the wealth of Egypt. He wasn't surprised she knew his name. Seemed like everyone in Cairo knew his name these days, ever since he came riding back from Hamunaptra with a sack full of treasure, and he half-expected to see some obnoxious photographer pop out of nowhere and snap a picture of his face. But there were no photographers. There were no journalists, no treasure hunters, no old acquaintances hoping he would remember them in his will. He only saw a woman; just an ordinary woman whose hair and dress were a little too long to be fashionable, and when he looked into her eyes he saw no curiosity, or any hunger for tales of the great lost city and the gold trapped beneath it.

She had weary eyes. Desperate eyes. She sounded desperate too, like it had taken a lot of nerve for her to arrive at his door.

"Yeah, I'm Rick," he said. "Who're you?"

She glanced nervously up and down the hallway, wary of footsteps that never came. "Would you mind letting me in?"

"Who are you?" Rick repeated more firmly.

She winced a little when he raised his voice. "My name is Anna," she said. "You're friends with Beni Gabor, aren't you?"

_Beni_. He should have known that such a desperate looking woman would have something to do with Beni. His old friend had been gone for several days now, trapped forever beneath the ruins of Hamunaptra, and Rick knew he shouldn't miss the two-faced little weasel, but he did. Beni was always around, whether Rick wanted him there or not. He was always sneaking around somewhere, always surviving whatever life threw at him, and now he was all alone out there without a real grave or anything to prove that he had lived at all.

Beni wasn't the sort of person that people wanted to remember.

"If he owes you money, I'll take care of it," Rick told Anna.

She bit her lower lip. "No. It isn't that." Her voice became a little harder, her back a little straighter as she raised her head to look directly at him. "_Please_. I really need to talk to you."

"All right," said Rick. Something about her desperate face and her hard, desperate voice moved him, and he stood aside so she could enter his hotel room. "Anna, huh?" he said as he showed her to a chair. "Beni never mentioned you."

"He's mentioned _you_ a few times," she said. "I saw your name in the papers. I thought you might be able to tell me where he is."

"Actually, uh, it's kinda hard to explain."

"He's gone, isn't he? I've been hearing rumors."

"Yeah," said Rick, relieved that he wouldn't have to find some way to gently break the news. It felt good to get the words out in the open. "Beni's gone."

"Oh," said Anna.

That was all she would say for a long moment as she stared first at the oriental rug on the floor, then at the fancy lamp with the frilly shade that sat on a table, until her eyes had found every piece of furniture and decor in the luxurious suite Rick had rented a few days before. He could do without the frilly lampshade, but he figured he could afford to indulge himself for once, now that he was considered Cairo's most successful treasure hunter. He had spent far too many years sleeping in cheap apartments.

Anna finally sighed, letting her breath out slowly, and looked up at Rick with a bitter little smile. "God, what a mess," she said.

Rick had never been good at comforting women. "You wanna tell me what this is all about?" he said as gently as he could.

"I _do_ want to, but it's so... it's rather embarrassing. I don't know where to begin."

"Lady, I've seen things you can't even imagine. Nothing you say is gonna shock me."

"All right, then." She swallowed nervously, looking down at her lap. "I'm going to have a baby. It's Beni's."

It was Rick's turn to say, "Oh."

"I found out a few weeks ago, but I didn't want to say anything until I was completely sure. Now I'll never get a chance to tell him."

A baby. Rick couldn't wrap his head around the fact that Beni had actually fathered a baby. He had seen mummies rise from the dead and witnessed the Plagues of Egypt. He had helped save the world from a terrible curse. He had gotten a woman like Evelyn to fall inexplicably in love with him. But he didn't think anything surprised him more than the idea that the woman sitting in front of him had created a child with Beni Gabor.

"You're shocked, aren't you?" she said. "I'm sorry. I just, I didn't know who else I could tell."

"Are you sure Beni's the, uh, the father?"

"Yes," said Anna. She sounded perfectly miserable. "I'm sure."

"So what are you gonna do?"

"I don't know. Have the baby, I suppose. It's the least I could do now that he's... now that he's dead."

"I'm sorry," said Rick, not knowing what else to say.

"I'm the one who should be sorry," said Anna. "I made a mistake, getting involved with a man like that."

Rick didn't know why the whole thing surprised him so much, but the situation felt more unreal with every word Anna spoke. It shouldn't surprise him at all, really. Beni wasn't blessed with good looks and had that whiny accent, but somehow—due to some crazy stroke of good luck, or simply a lot of alcohol, or perhaps both—he managed to get women to take a second look at him. He shouldn't be surprised that a woman like Anna had been lonely enough to slip into bed with the likes of Beni, but he still couldn't believe that there was a baby who might inherit Beni's shifty, nervous eyes, or his skinny frame, or his whine of a voice. All he could think about was that night on the boat when he pointed his gun at Beni, looking into those wide, scared eyes and listening to that ridiculous, desperate plea. _Think of my children!_

_You don't have any children_, Rick had told him.

Beni's response sounded like bullshit at the time—_Someday I might_—but now Rick was staring at Anna, who said she was going to have Beni's child, and someday wasn't so impossible anymore. Someday had arrived and Beni didn't even know it.

When he thought of Beni, though, he couldn't see him as the treacherous rat who allied himself with Imhotep. He only saw a sad, greedy man who would never get to see his child, now that he was trapped under the sand for all eternity.

Rick wasn't sure what possessed him to do it, but he dug his wallet out of his pocket and held out a generous amount of money to Anna. "Here."

She looked at the money like she had never seen cash before. "What's this?"

"I don't know a thing about kids, but I know they eat up your money real fast."

"I can't possibly take this."

"Look, Beni was my pal. And you need it more than I do."

She finally took the money, though she quickly tucked it into her purse and out of sight, as if she wanted to forget it as soon as possible. "Thank you," she murmured.

"He would have made a lousy father," Rick told her honestly.

"Yes," she said, giving him another bitter smile. "He certainly would have."


End file.
